Google Text Ads In Newspapers: But Where Do You Click?

from the questions,-questions dept

A few months ago, it was widely reported that Google was getting into the print advertising business, placing ads in magazines. While they can apparently sell some of those ads at something of a premium, some have questioned how much efficiency Google can really add to the process. The process of setting up Google AdWords is incredibly easy. Setting up an ad for a print publication may take a bit more of an effort... unless, of course, Google simply puts the same ads in print as well. Search guru Danny Sullivan is reporting a rumor that Google is about to start placing ads in Chicago newspapers, and those ads will specifically be pulled straight from their text ads in the AdWords program. Of course, those ads are designed to make you click, and there's no place to click in a newspaper. One option might be to add a phone number and do "pay per call" which has been getting a lot of buzz lately -- but it's not clear how successful those programs are yet. Still, the bigger question is relevancy. Google's online ads can obviously be relevant based on keyword. That's obviously a lot more difficult in a newspaper.

Reader Comments

Why wouldn't they be relevant?

My guess would be that this is actually what Google is hoping to bring to the newspapers in terms of effeciency. They can use their algorithms to come up with targeted, relevant ads for the article that is being printed and the newspaper company would insert those in where appropriate. I would actually guess that this will be EASIER in a newspaper since its more structured than a random web page or blog, plus I'm sure the paper would be able to review the ads before going to print and nix some of they felt they were inapprpriate.

The contract model would obviously be different than the pay-per-click model of the web but there are plenty of well-established ways to do print advertising and its not like that side of the advertising business is going to go away soon.